The Byronic hero, named for Lord Byron and his tales
of dark, brooding, guilt-tortured wanders, is an enduring archetype. The hero
of Byron’s Manfred is the most frequently cited example of a Byronic
hero. He is a mysterious and gloomy character who has powers and passions
superior to common mortals but who is tortured by guilt (Abrams 552). But the
Byronic hero did not die with Byron. It continues to appear in modern pop
culture.For example, Xena, the heroine
of the cult classic TV series Xena: Warrior Princess is a modern example
of Byronic Hero, with a few changes.

The most obvious twist is that Xena is a Byronic heroine.
She is part of a growing trend of strong women, tough chicks and female
warriors that has become popular in recent years. In fact, Xena was among the
vanguard of that army. The traditional Byronic hero is not only male but in
many ways very masculine. He is a man who women desire and men admire. Xena is
a woman who both men, and many women desire and who both men and women admire
(McLain). Xena has all the traits of the classical, masculine warrior-hero. She
is a great warrior, strong, fierce, courageous and stoic. She is very much in
the line of Odysseus and Achilles or Beowulf.But she is as also beautiful and sexy in a “femme fatal” sort of way.
She also has, increasingly as her story continues, a soft, loving, protective
and motherly side.

Another twist is that Xena shares with many recent
incarnations of the Byronic heros is that she is, for all her darkness, a hero.
The brooding, haunted Byronic hero has been mixed with the superhero: the
super-human champion of justice and defender of innocent bystanders, small children
and damsels in distress. Instead of being completely indifferent or even
hostile to normal, human society, they protect it, but are forever apart from
it. Xena must protect the world from what she used to be in her quest for an
ever-elusive redemption.

The character of Xena was first introduced on Hercules:
The Legendary Journeys, as the tough-chick love interest/villain of the
week. Xena was a warlord, meaning she ran around with an army and conquered
things, killed people and burned villages. Then she met Hercules, who reformed
her formt eh proverbial dark side, after which she wondered off being guilty
and depressed and not in the least sure what to do with herself (“The Warrior
Princess”, “The Gauntlet” and “Unchained Heart”). The answer came when she
realized that it was not enough to simply give up wreaking death and
destruction; she must fight to stop those who do so in order to atone for her
own sins (“Sins of the Past”). So, she employs her talents for death and
destruction against the Evil Nasties of the world.

Like Byron’s heroes, Xena is a wonderer. Too
restless to settle down and too scary to be a part of normal society, she
spends the rest of her life roaming across Greece (And India and China). The
Byronic hero is usually totally cut off from others. He is either incapable of
love or capable only of forbidden, impossible or otherwise problematic loves
which are, in fact, the source of much of the hero’s pain and guilt. But unlike
the classic Byronic hero, Xena is not entirely alone. She has her sidekick,
Gabrielle, as companion, foil and external conscience.

In Xena’s case her love is
not what damns her; it is what redeems her. Her affection for Gabrielle, who is
essentially goodness and innocence incarnate, is the thing that makes her a sympathetic
character, both in the eyes of the audience and in her own eyes. Xena becomes
steadily less dark and frightening as the show goes on and her relationship
with Gabrielle deepens. In fact, by the final season Xena’s character has
become downright cuddly, at least in comparison to her earlier self. One could
argue that Xena’s ambiguously sexual love for her sidekick is a forbidden love
because it is between two women. However, the lesbian undertones of the
Xena/Gabrielle relationship seemed to be more a topic of controversy around
the show than in it. It is never directly addressed in the show and it is never
entirely clear whether the characters are supposed to be lovers or just really,
really, really close friends. A more central issue is Xena’s guilt over
her fear that association with her will destroy Gabrielle, either by getting
her killed or by destroying the innocence and idealism that is central to her
character. As Manfred’s love destroyed his beloved, so Xena fears to destroy
hers. But this fear underestimates Gabrielle. Gabrielle does loose much of her
innocence and her naïve idealism, but it doesn’t destroy her. She retains her
basic goodness and her ideals and becomes a sadder but wiser and much more
competent character.

The Byronic hero is usually
beyond ordinary mortals in some way, and Xena’s prowess as a warrior is
downright supernatural. It is never very well explained why or how she can
catch arrows in flight, do standing back summersaults ten feet into the air,
single handedly fight off an army of armed men or demons and make the pieces of
her chakram fly off in two separate directions and execute a complicated
series of maneuvers before retuning to her. It is enough in the context of the
show that she can, and does at ever opportunity.

The Byronic hero is “in his isolation absolutely self
reliant, perusing his own ends according to his self-generated moral code
against any opposition, human or super natural” (Abrams 552). The phrase “We
make our own destiny” was the motto, so to speak, of Hercules, Xena’s
reformer and onetime lover. Though the phrase is his trademark, the idea
is still a pervasive force in Xena’s stories as well. She will be no one’s
pawn. Like Manfred, Xena refuses to bow down before higher powers (and, in the
mix-and-match theology of the show, there is no shortage of gods for Xena to
defy, battle, ally with, destroy or annoy as she sees fit).She not only defies the entire pantheon of Greek
gods, individually and collectively at various times, but kills most of
them in “Motherhood”, to defend her daughter. Perhaps the best example of
Xena’s defiance of divine will is in relation to the quesi-Christian league of
angels and their unseen god who replace the pantheon. She allies with them and
fights as their champion until they meddle too much in her life. Then she not
only refuses to cooperate, she tries to drown an Archangel (“The God You
Know”).

Abrams describes the Byronic hero as driven by guilt
toward “an inevitable destruction” (552). In Manfred’s case, it is not so much
an inevitable destruction as a death wish that is first thwarted and finally
fulfilled (in a rather strange manor). For Xena, dying once like a normal
person is not punishment enough. Over the course of the show, she dies and is
resurrected twice, her mission not yet completed, her debt not yet paid. In the
final episode she dies (And stays dead, despite her sidekick, who would
resurrect her) so that the souls of the people she killed can rest in peace.

It says a great deal about the popularity of the
dark, dangerous, tortured character of Xena that Xena: Warrior Princess,
a spin off Hercules: The Legendary Journeys not only prospered, but
became more popular that it’s progenitor.It ran for six seasons, acquired a large and loyal following and a place
as a pop culture icon. Nor is Xena the only current TV hero to reflect
characteristics of the Byronic hero. Angel, the vampire with a conscience of Buffy
the Vampire Slayer and its spin off Angel, Spike, also from Buffy
and Dark Angel’s haunted, transgenic super-soldier Max come to mind.
Dark, deadly and depressive seems to be in style in modern entertainment.